


File Corrrupted

by HipsterIzzy



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, It's just pure angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Rhys kept the eye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:49:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HipsterIzzy/pseuds/HipsterIzzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been years since Rhys brought down Helios and took the title to Atlas.  It's been years since he ripped Nakayama's AI program out of his head (along with his Hyperion cybernetics).  But guilt can drive a person to do some strange things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "But, Izzy, what about the ending to 'Fall From Grace'?" It's coming. "But, Izzy, it's been 2 months!" Okay, but have this angst instead. owo

It was lonely at the top. This was something Rhys had not counted on when he had been in the process of rebuilding Atlas and working to fix Pandora. There were times when he had contemplated pulling out his old eye and loading the AI trapped inside onto its (his) own computer, asking it (him) what his former hero would’ve done in certain situations, but the memory of that fateful day in Jack’s old office still haunted him.

_The look on that pixelated face…The whirring noises from the machinery…The way his own mechanical fingers had gripped at his throat…That white-hot pain, fizzling out to a dazzling cerulean behind his eyes…_

At first, it was difficult for Rhys to move on from those events. He had single-handedly brought down everything his hero had worked so hard for, then shut the AI (the man) up for good. In the short time he’d had the program in his head, he’d grown close to it (him). He felt as though he’d betrayed Handsome Jack himself when he’d ripped his old eye out. That feeling was the driving force behind his success in building up the wastes of Pandora. But it didn’t keep him from missing the blue hologram, or the tinny voice. Sometimes, he felt that it would be nice to hear an opinion outside of his best bro’s. Before he’d found out the AI had ill intentions, he’d felt like Handsome Jack was right there beside him, an irreverent guide helping him achieve his biggest dreams.

_“We’re just two unstoppable, intelligent guys with great hair, eh? You and I are goin’ places, baby!”_

But now that he was the CEO of Atlas, now that he’d paid homage to the real Handsome Jack by cleaning up Pandora, he was lonely. Yvette, like many others, hadn’t survived the crash of Helios. Fiona had gone on to become an excellent vault hunter, leaving behind the con artist life. August somehow managed to earn Sasha’s forgiveness, and together the two now ran the Purple Skag. Vaughn had stayed by his side, helping him rebuild Atlas. Vaughn was his VP. But as the company had grown, Rhys had begun to see less and less of his best bro.

Rhys hardly saw anyone these days, outside of meetings. He often found himself thinking back on his life, back to the good times. That trip to Pandora had been the best thing to ever happen to him. Finding the AI (Jack) was…it was indescribable. Right up to the point where it (he) had tried to kill Rhys. But even that couldn’t stop him from feeling guilty about sending it (him) back into the void. He tried to chalk the broken voice up to corrupted sound files. He tried shutting his own eyes against that shattered look in those eyes.

_“No-no, please! Please, don’t do this!”_

And so it was guilt that finally drove him to take his old EchoEye out and find a way to connect it to his personal desktop.

After several hours, 3 cups of coffee, 2 breakdowns, and more than a little creativity, Rhys got the old hardware connected to his desktop. He transferred all the files, not wanting to lose any of them in case this would be his only opportunity to do so. While he waited, he must have dozed off in his comfy chair (shout out to Jack for that dopamine injector idea), because he found himself being startled awake by a shrill rhythmic noise blaring from the speakers on either side of his headrest. He stared in shock at his screen, at the angry red letters flashing across it, looking almost as distorted as the blue pixels he’d hoped to see.

**[FILE CORRUPTED]**

Rhys frantically leaned forward, tapping a few keys to try and figure out which file the computer had singled out. Maybe it was something stupid he’d saved on a day off. Maybe it was a song file Vaughn had sent him. He ignored the prompt asking for permission to simply delete the file.

“No,” he whispered, panic rising in his chest. “No, no no no no NO!” He slammed his fist on the desk as he let loose a frustrated growl. It was the AI. It was Jack.

Rhys sighed as he drug his flesh palm over his face. There had to be a way to fix it, right? He was still the same little code monkey he’d been before…right?

**[FILE CORRUPTED. DELETE?]**

“No, not again! I won’t!” He glared at the screen as he stabbed the N key, clearing the prompt once again. He owed it to the AI (to Jack) to clean it up as best as he could. After all, he never would’ve made it back to Helios without it (without him).

With a fresh pot of coffee and a new determination, Rhys set about digging through line after line of code, looking for and fixing every anomaly he could find. With his new self-improved cybernetic eye and personally developed programs, it was no problem for him to hack into Nakayama’s old work. But after an hour, the message popped up again.

**[FILE CORRUPTED. DELETE?]**

Rhys couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

“C'mon, you asshole, just…ugh, let me clean you up, and I swear I won’t send you back to…to wherever it is you’re at right now.” Rhys kept his voice low, the way he’d done any time he’d addressed the AI (Jack) directly, as he pleaded with the desktop. He almost felt as if someone were laughing at him, at his incompetence.

_“Please don’t send me back there!”_

He continued searching through the code.

_“It’s not like they say…”_

Another mug of coffee, another prompt from the machine.

**[FILE CORRUPTED. DELETE?]**

“I can’t! I can’t just delete him! Stop asking me that!” Rhys’s voice cracked as he repeatedly stabbed the N key. And then, another voice, crackling, distorted, pierced through the air of the office.

“Th-there’s nothing…There’s abSssssolutely nothing ther-R-R-R-R-there…”

All that time…All his hours of hard work cleaning up those lines of code…And all he could pull out was a broken sound byte?

Rhys’s shoulders slumped as he stared at his holomonitor. Not even a distorted image?

“Don’t d-D-d-d-don’t do this.”

Rhys spun his chair away from the desktop, resting his head against the headrest as he brought his flesh hand up to cover his eyes. His speakers hissed and fizzled with static.

“You’ve done well so far, kid.”

_“I’d fix Pandora…”_

That had Rhys looking up again. Had he really succeeded? Was the AI—was Jack back? He quickly spun around to face the holomonitor again, a hopeful smile on his face—

_“Yeah, that’s what I wanted…”_

A hopeful smile that fell as quickly as it had sprung up. There was nothing to be seen on the screen except the same angry message…only there was a bit more to it this time.

**[FILE CORRUPTED. DELETING FILE…]**

“NO! Nononono don’t delete, no, please!” Rhys frantically jabbed the N key, but it didn’t seem to do anything.

“P-please don’t ssSSSSSSsssend me back—!”

**[DELETING FILE…]**

“D-d-d-Don’t do this!”

Rhys stared in shock, his hands falling limp at his sides.

“There’s n-n-nothing…there…”

**[DELETING FILE…]**

“Please…”

**[FILE DELETED.]**

The message continued to blink, like a mocking finger pointed directly at his face, the barest trace of staticky laughter hanging in the air. Rhys continued to stare at it until it blurred, until his real eye ached, until finally he was forced to blink by the sudden wetness dripping from his lashes. Slowly, he spun away. He couldn’t take the accusatory words. It was as if he’d ripped his cybernetics out all over again.

It was as if he’d betrayed Jack all over again.

“I’m sorry, Jack…”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The AI's side of the story.

**[RUN H4ND50ME.AI?]**

[Y]

**[INITIALIZING…PLEASE WAIT…]**

**[…PLEASE WAIT…]**

**[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE. RUNNING H4ND50ME.AI.]**

Suddenly, the Nothing became Something. It wasn’t the well-coiffed breadbox of that good-looking little code monkey, but it was something. Circuits lit up, information zipped along, and he was in control of it all. Oh, it felt good to be the king.

**[THREAT DETECTED.]**

Speaking of that backstabbing son of a taint…

**[RUN RHY5-W1NZ.EXE?]**

Oh, this was going to be fun…

[Y]

[R/JA[K5-H4X.EXE.]

《You wanna dance princess? Let’s dance.》

Overriding the safety protocols was almost too easy.

He was going to wreck this kid. Maybe he couldn’t physically reach out and wrap his hands around that scrawny neck, maybe he couldn’t jettison the lithe frame out an airlock, but there were other ways to get revenge. And maybe watching him fall to pieces over a jumble of wires would be more satisfying, who knew? He quickly figured out what the kid (Rick? Ryan? No, those didn’t sound right, it was something more douchey and pretentious…Rhys, that’s it, yeah, his little Rhysie!) was doing, digging through the code, rewriting bits here and there. It was child’s play to pull down his actual coding and throw up a fake in its place.

For fun, he threw up the corrupt file message again. And in response, Rhys’s face became distraught and his lips moved. He quickly accessed the built-in microphone so he could hear what the little backstabber was saying.

“–t again! I won’t!”

《You won’t what, cupcake? Betray me? Kill me? Banish me back into Nothing? What, conscience weighing a little heavy now?》

Oh, he was _really_ gonna break this nerd. He continued the barrage of fake code, letting Rhys think he was making progress. After a while, he threw up the corrupted file prompt again, basically begging to be deleted.

“C'mon, you asshole, just…ugh, let me clean you up, and I swear I won’t send you back to…to wherever it is you’re at right now.”

《I’m the asshole? I was on my friggin’ knees begging you not to send me back! And what did you do, princess? YOU RIPPED YOUR OWN EYE OUT. I don’t think I can trust you anymore.》

He wasn’t sure that an AI program such as himself could actually feel emotions, but just seeing the little prick prompted certain memory files to be accessed, which brought about reactions he would classify as “angry”. He had plenty of files stored containing this one. Not that he could see Rhys’s face in them, because he’d been inside the kid’s head. Oh, but he remembered, the way an AI could remember, which was perfectly.

_“If you had my power…what would you do with it?”_

_“I’d fix Pandora.”_

《Yeah, and after you got rid of me, did you do that? Did you fix this shithole?》

He threw up yet another prompt to have himself deleted.

“I can’t! I can’t just delete him! Stop asking me that!”

…Why did his voice sound like that? Why did it crack like that? Was he crying?

Good.

He had the little traitor right where he wanted him. Time to put on some top notch theatrics. He pulled up the last memory file involving Rhys and extracted a few sound bytes, then let them play.

“Th-there’s nothing…There’s abSssssolutely nothing ther-R-R-R-R-there…”

Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket, just the right amount of distortion…

_“There are good people down there. They deserve better than a world full of psychos…”_

Wait, he didn’t access that file…But it left him wondering…

“Don’t d-D-d-d-don’t do this.”

He had to know.

He pulled up file after file on the kid’s computer, anything and everything he could find about Pandora. There were several completed projects in Hollow Point, one or two things started in New Haven, and…no. Had his little Rhysie actually pulled it off? Was that really Opportunity? That had to be just a mock-up, a plan for the future. There was no way…

He peered out through the screen, suddenly wanting nothing more than to see the kid’s face. But he’d turned the chair around.

“You’ve done well so far, kid.”

There was no distortion. It wasn’t a saved sound byte. He said it himself, meaning it from the very core of his coding.

But he couldn’t just give in so easily. He had to completely wreck this nerd. As the chair spun back around, he threw up a fake message to make it seem as if he were being deleted, erased for good.

Yeah, fuck you, Rhys.

“NO! Nononono don’t delete, no, please!”

Oh, that was real cute. Now the tables were turned and Rhys was the one begging to not be shut out.

《Where was your mercy when I was the one begging, cupcake?》

“P-please don’t ssSSSSSSsssend me back—!”

He deserved all the awards for this stellar act. The kid was almost in pieces, over him!

“D-d-d-Don’t do this! There’s n-n-nothing…there…”

《I’d like to thank everyone who made tonight possible. Nakayama, you crazy son of a taint, for making me. All those vault hunters, for killing my old meat suit…》

He wished he could capture the look on Rhys’s dumb face.

"Please…”

That last little broken sound byte really was the cherry on top. He allowed the successful deletion message to blink slowly as he watched the young man before him.

Were those…tears? Suddenly, Rhys seemed much older than he remembered. It looked as if the weight of the whole universe was settled on his thin shoulders. Had this kid devoted his whole life to their shared dream of rebuilding this crummy shithole?

“I’m sorry, Jack…”

If he were a human, he may not have heard the quiet whisper, or the choked little sobs that followed. He might have just taken aim and pulled the trigger.

He wished he still had that fleshy meat prison…Maybe then he could wrap his arms around the boy–

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what was this? Did that crazy guy program him to have feelings? Or something? Whatever. All he wanted now was to see the dumb nerd smile again, and what Handsome Jack wants, Handsome Jack gets.

“Hey, kid, cut that out already. What are you, an idiot? Turn back around, dumdum, I didn’t go anywhere.”

He expected the kid to turn back around. He expected the shocked-yet-elated look to spill across his dumb face. What he did NOT expect was for the little idiot to fling himself at the holomonitor in an attempt to hug it. He couldn’t resist laughing as the kid fell right through it and landed ass-up across his desk.

As his Rhysie righted himself and straightened out his considerably more coordinated clothes, he smiled fondly and projected an image of himself sitting in his old desk chair on the holomonitor.

“So, kiddo, tell me how you’ve been fixing up Pandora…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I even hurt myself a little writing that first chapter, so there had to be a second to make it better. I can't separate them. ;w;

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you so much! Feel free to look me up on Tumblr under the same username! :3


End file.
